At the request of Diaspora Affairs Minister Natan Sharansky, PMW
director
Itamar Marcus today briefed a group of 80 ambassadors and diplomats
in the
Israeli Knesset about PMW´s latest report on Palestinian Authority
(PA)
promotion of genocide against Jews. This event comes a day after
Marcus and
Minister Sharansky held two joint news conferences to present the
report to
the Israeli and foreign media.

The report, Kill a Jew - Go To Heaven, written by Marcus and PMW
associate
director Barbara Crook, examines the way in which the leadership of
the PA
has taught, and continues to teach, an ideology of virulent hatred of
Jews
and Israel that mandates the killing of Jews as a religious
obligation. The
report documents how the PA has systematically built a three-tiered
case
against Jewish existence, much as a prosecutor would build a legal
case in
a court of law to demand a death sentence. At the briefing, Marcus
presented many examples from the PA-controlled print and broadcast
media,
including numerous video excerpts, to show the systematic way in
which this
hatred of Jews is promoted by the PA´s religious, political and
academic
elites, and taught through cultural, educational, religious and even
entertainment frameworks.

Click here to see full report on the PMW web site.
www.pmw.org.il/KJGH.htm

Responding to Marcus´s presentation, Minister Sharansky said his
statement
to the media: "Even as the Palestinian Authority works to prevent a
few
hundred terrorists from attacking Jews and Israelis, it prepares
hundreds
of thousands more. As in Nazi Germany, there is an entire ´culture of
hatred´ in Palestinian society today, from textbooks to crossword
puzzles,
from day camps to TV music videos and calling for the murder of Jews,
as
Jews, is the end result."

The following is a front-page article from the Jerusalem Post before
the
report was released:

At a press conference timed to coincide with events marking the 60th
anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Diaspora Affairs Minister
Natan
Sharansky will on Tuesday assert that the Palestinian Authority, even
under
new chairman Mahmoud Abbas, is engaged in the "promotion of genocide"
against the Jewish people.

The "Kill a Jew - Go to Heaven" presentation, compiled by Palestinian
Media
Watch, an Israel-based organization that monitors incitement in
Palestinian
society, and distributed under Sharansky´s auspices, accuses the
Palestinian media of dehumanizing Jews similar to ways the Nazis did.

A fundamental message broadcast in sermons, academic discourse and
even
children´s shows, according to report co-author Itamar Marcus, is
that "the
Jews are an evil force, and it´s inherent to the Jews, and therefore
they
have to be killed."

In the run-up to the PA election on January 9, Abbas met with the
head of
the Palestinian Broadcasting Authority and asked him to check all
programs
aired on PA television to prevent the broadcast of inciting material.
Since
then, Marcus said that nationalistic programming calling for violence
against Israel has decreased somewhat, but that anti-Semitic rhetoric
has
remained unabated.

He pointed to January 14, when he said an imam gave a sermon
declaring,
"The days of the pilgrimage to Mecca remind the Muslim of the
connection to
his history and remind him of his past glory and the lowliness of the
Jews,
who today rule the world; how Muhammad expelled them from Medina in
retribution for their actions and their hostility and their
corruption, and
not on false charges, not unjustly. No, it was retribution for their
hostility toward Islam."

It is important to document this phenomenon, he said, because many
people
view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as centered on political
issues, when
the Palestinians have tied redemption to killing Jews. "It´s not
connected
to borders, it´s not connected to compromise, and no compromise will
be
reached [once] it´s a battle of God against the Jews."

"As in Nazi Germany, there is an entire ´culture of hatred´ in
Palestinian
society today, from textbooks to crossword puzzles, from day camps to
TV
music videos," Sharansky charged in a statement issued by his office
ahead
of the press conference. "Calling for the murder of Jews, as Jews, is
the
end result."

The presentation comes ahead of Israel´s National Day Against Anti-
Semitism
on Thursday and the same day´s ceremonies at Auschwitz. It will be
made
available in English as well as Hebrew to engage the international
community.

"The whole world has to be aware of anti-Semitism, because it isn´t
just
the problem of the Jews. It´s the problem of any democratic society,"
a
Sharansky aide said. "The world has to understand what we are dealing
with.
It´s not only whether there was a bombing yesterday or not. If you
don´t
change the atmosphere in books or on TV, it won´t be enough."